Republican strategists acknowledge their party faces political challenges on health care. One is the reform bill was fully debated in 2010 and it’s rare that an issue is central to two elections in a row. Another is the energy level needed to fuel an effort to kill a major law. “It’s going to be awfully hard to repeal it,” says John Feehery, president of QGA Communications and a former top aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert. “It’s hard to maintain the kind of anger that comes with repeal.”

A third problem, according to a GOP strategist familiar with health-care issues, is that supporting repeal means the eventual nominee will need an alternative to the Obama law. “That becomes messy,” this strategist told me, because the nominee presumably will want to continue certain popular benefits and “there’s not an easy fix to how to replace the rest of Obamacare that keeps those features.” […]

The health-care law timeline will help. The least popular element of the law, the requirement that most people buy insurance or pay a fine, won’t take effect until 2014. But by November 2012, many popular provisions will have touched people’s lives.

Democrats did not exactly mount a vigorous defense of the law in 2010. But Obama will be its chief defender this time, and he’ll have advantages that were not available to the hapless Dems running for the House and Senate. One is the klieg lights of a presidential campaign; whether it’s in ads, debates or speeches, people will be paying close attention to what the president says. “The best person to articulate the case for the law is Obama himself,” says Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute. “He will be the one explaining it and trying to put people’s minds at ease.”

So, good news or bad news depending on your views on the ACA. Obviously, we’ll have to see how the court cases get resolved. And yes, I know I’ve made almost this exact same reference before. What can I say, it’s convenient! I’ll post the song this time: